


When We Were Wizards

by Dumbothepatronus



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Muggle, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Cancer, Childhood Friends, Dragons, Friendship, Gen, Happy Ending, Hospitals, POV Harry Potter, POV Third Person Limited, Platonic Relationships, Trolls, childhood illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:20:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25234549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dumbothepatronus/pseuds/Dumbothepatronus
Summary: Harry Potter has been battling a dragon inside of him for ages, and he doesn't want to talk about it. But when Hermione Granger shows up with a troll of her own to face, he discovers that friends can be found in the most unlikely places.One-shot, Muggle!AU
Relationships: Hermione Granger & Harry Potter
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16





	When We Were Wizards

**Author's Note:**

> For Tenille. I hope you drop a toilet on its head.

Harry could tell by the way her mouth twitched that she was a talker. He fought off an itch of resentment; he hated talking about the dragon, and there was no doubt she’d ask. They always did. It was all anyone wanted to know.

And what was she wearing, anyway? A Halloween costume? Harry glared, but it didn’t matter. The frizzy-haired girl—black robes, pointy hat and all—strolled right up to him. Despite her confident stride, she sat carefully in the next-door chair, as if there was a balloon she was trying not to pop. 

“I’m Hermione. Hermione Granger.”

Harry placed a hand on his baseball cap so it wouldn’t fall off as he raised his chin towards the ceiling and stared at the lines of a familiar serpentine crack. He was right. Her know-it-all voice gave it away: She was the worst kind of talker.

“What’s yours? Your name, that is. Obviously I’m not asking about… well. Mother says that’s rude. I don’t do that anymore.” Her eyes flickered to the woman beside her. Brown hair just as frizzy as Hermione’s, she wielded a pair of knitting needles that jumped along a row of dove-gray yarn like a nervous tick. Harry glanced at his father, James, remembering the way his fingers used to twitch between the pages of the sports magazines he snatched from the low-sitting tables sprinkled around the waiting room. 

There was no use fighting it. If she wanted to talk, he would talk. “You must be new here.”

She reached into the pocket of her odd black nightgown and drew out a pocket watch rimmed in gold. She blinked at it, traced her fingers along its edges, before looking Harry right in the eye. “It’s my second time. And hopefully the last.”

Harry nodded to himself. Not a dragon, then. He tried not to envy her; after all, any kid stuck here owned their own special brand of suffering. Hermione tapped a blunt fingernail against the watch’s face, ticking along with it, counting down the minutes until the nurse called her name.

It wouldn’t have been so bothersome if she wasn’t tapping down his time, too. “That’s a neat watch. Can I see?”

Her fist tightened around it, and she pulled it against her stomach.

“I won’t grab it, promise.”

One by one, her fingers uncurled. “My granddad gave it to me. He said it would help… since I kept asking about the time, especially on appointment days.” Her legs swung under her chair—up and down, up and down. “Twenty-three minutes left. It’s a bit of a drive, and you never know how traffic will be.”

Harry sent her a grim smile. “Fifteen for me. We were late once; the nurse wouldn’t let me have any lollipops.” Before the dragon, Harry thought himself too old for lollipops. Maybe he still was, but they helped soothe the fire. 

Hermione pouted. “I can’t have one, anyway. I haven’t eaten for”—she checked the watch—“twenty-six hours. I’m starved.” 

“No food? That stinks.”

She snapped her pocket watch shut, slipped it into her pocket, and turned to him with raised eyebrows. “Eating within 24 hours of a surgery can cause aspiration, which can lead to death. If you’ve listened to your doctor’s instructions, you should have—”

Harry shook his head, and she stopped mid-sentence, her mouth hanging open. 

“I’m not having surgery.”

With that, he pulled a chapter book from his knapsack and flipped it to his bookmarked page. He wasn’t up for talking about his appointment, and she’d ask him if he let her. He still felt her eyes on him, even though he tried to throw himself into his fantasy, into the story of the knight with chainmail armor and undying courage. 

“Harry Potter?” A nurse’s voice, crisp and clear, rang through the room. 

Harry’s father stood and tucked the magazine under his arm. For a moment, Harry thought he saw mischief winking at him from the corner of his father’s eye—mischief from a lifetime ago, when there was football practice and maths tests and wrestling matches. “Come along, Harry. No sense in dawdling.”

A warm hand clutched Harry’s arm, and he turned back to a set of wide, worried eyes. “Good luck, Harry,” said Hermione. “I hope I don’t see you here again.”

For a few weeks, Harry thought her wish had been granted. Other children stumbled into the waiting room—some with shiny bald heads to match his own, others with straight blonde hair and button noses. It was good, though. It was good she wasn’t here. Nobody wanted to be; least of all him. 

But one day, when the spring rain beat against the plate-glass windows, Hermione pushed open the heavy front door. A breath of humid air whooshed in with her and blew her hair into a billowing cloud around her face. She wore another costume, midnight blue this time with stars and moons and a matching hat. And her mother had those knitting needles, poking out of the top of a canvas tote.

Hermione shuffled over to the vacant chair next to his. “Well, I’m back.”

“I figured.”

Hermione frowned. “It’ll be the last time. The doctor’s sure of it.”

The pocket watch was in her hands again, her fingernail tapping against it. He had hope once, too. He used to think doctors knew everything, that they could fix him. But this was his dragon to slay—if only he could gather the strength to lift the sword. “What’s all this about, anyway?” Harry waved his hand at Hermione’s pointed hat.

“Oh!” Hermione had that look, the one that said she was about to talk a whole lot. But this time, Harry didn’t mind. She seemed happier when she had something to explain. “It’s all very clever, you see. In  _ Marion’s Guide to Childhood Illness _ , it says that children fare better if you give them an imaginary villain to face. To represent the problem, you know. Mine’s a troll. And this is my witches’ uniform.” She waved a hand at her starry costume, as if he could have confused her meaning.

Harry stared up at the cracks in the ceiling for a long minute, sixty taps of her fingernail upon the pocket watch glass. 

“Mine’s a dragon,” he finally said.

A nurse with ebony hair pulled into a severe bun pushed through the door and adjusted the spectacles on the tip of her nose. “Hermione Granger?”

Blue and silver swirled in a flurry of motion as she slipped the watch into her costume’s pocket and stumbled to her feet. 

“Good luck with your troll,” said Harry. “Drop a toilet on its head.”

Hermione laughed, pure and clear and full of the childhood they both knew they were missing. Despite himself, Harry’s heart warmed. He had done that; he had brought a smile to her face. Happiness was priceless gold in these somber halls, where the smell of hand sanitizer stung your nose as much as the fear of monsters stung your eyes. 

“And you,” she said. “With your dragon.”

It was five months before Harry saw her again, but this time he was prepared. He’d spent the three-month break between his battle cycles checking out books from the crafting section of the library until he’d found the perfect thing. 

And judging by the heavy trudge of her footsteps, she needed it. 

“Where’s your costume?” he asked, once her mother started clicking away on her knitting needles. “Don’t you need it to defeat your troll?”

Hermione shrugged and slumped in her chair. She didn’t even have her pocket watch out. Nausea that had nothing to do with his upcoming appointment swirled in Harry’s stomach.

“Hey,” he said. “I brought you something.” 

Harry pulled a black-painted dowel rod from his knapsack. “Every witch needs a wand.”

Her smile was weak and watery, but she took the wand and twirled it in her hands. “Last time was supposed to work. It did at first, but then… then…”

“The troll came back?”

Hermione nodded and wiped her nose with the sleeve of her sweater. It was the first time Harry had seen her wearing anything other than her ridiculous nightgowns, and he hated it. 

“How can you defeat a monster when every time you knock it down, it gets back up?” she asked.

“With magic?”

“Magic isn’t real.”

Harry stared at his empty fingers. “I haven’t defeated my dragon yet, either. So maybe I’m not the best one to ask.”

The waiting room door whooshed open. “Harry Potter?”

“Wait!” Hermione’s hand snatched Harry’s wrist. “Can I have your address? So we can be pen pals? I’m stuck here for a week this time. I could use a friend.”

Harry glanced at his father, who gave a permissive nod. There was a pen and notebook in his knapsack, for drawing and doodling during his sessions. He found it, scribbled down the letters and numbers, and ripped out the paper. “Write to me as soon as you can. I’ll write you back.”

But in the next days, the dragon grew stronger. Its fiery breath filled Harry’s mind with smoke, smoke so thick, so heavy, that it blinded him. Sometimes his father’s voice wavered through the dragon’s roars, but it was distant, quiet. The world was full of dragon, and it rampaged, burned, and charred until the landscape turned to ash.

With a gulp and a heart of steel, Harry remembered Hermione. Had she written to him by now? Was she waiting for him to fight through the flames and grime and pen a response? But his arms shook, and his knees threatened to buckle. In the center of an abandoned town, the black dragon stood, a steady stream of blistering fire spouting from its gaping maw.

“You don’t scare me, dragon!” Harry shouted. “You don’t scare me, because I have magic, and because I have—” He felt for his pocket, but instead of his jeans, he found a voluminous scarlet robe. He reached inside and pulled out a golden pocket watch. 

“I have this! And I will conquer you!” 

Harry cracked the lid open, and a beam of light shot out through the smoke. The dragon screeched and tucked its head under its wing. 

“That’s it! You’d better run. Go! Go, and don’t come back!”

With a pathetic squeal, the dragon ducked behind the ruins of a burnt-out house, his flaming breath a memory in the choking air. Defeated for now, defeated for today. Tomorrow would be a new fight.

Through the smoky tendrils, a light appeared on the horizon. It grew like a sunset until its glory overtook the pocket watch’s beam, and Harry slipped it into his robes. 

Then slowly, subtly, the village faded. He could feel his feet, his legs, and a heavy blanket draped over him. He could feel his hands, the cool air surrounding them. His eyes blinked open. He snapped them shut again; after so many days of smoke, reality was stabbing, blinding. To the right, a steady beep-beep-beep chirped in his ear. The hospital. Of course he was in the hospital; these days, was there anywhere else?

The light glowed dimmer now—dim enough for him to peek through his eyelashes and take in the familiar room. A low couch tucked into a corner sat empty, a copy of _ Sports Illustrated _ laid open on its cushions. And there, on the bedside table, was a little golden circle on a folded piece of lined paper. His muscles groaned as he rolled to his side and fumbled with his fingertips until they struck against cold metal. It couldn’t be. She wouldn’t have been here, not when she had her own troll to fight. But it was—Harry pulled the treasure onto his lap along with the note beneath it.

_ Dear Harry, _

_ I’ve visited every day for the past three weeks, but you’re always sleeping. I know you’re fighting an epic battle in there, and since I’ve defeated my troll, I thought you could use this. You need it more than I do.  _

_ Yours,  _

_ Hermione _

Awestruck, Harry ran his fingertips over the fire-breathing dragon engraved into the cover of Hermione’s pocket watch. Voices murmured in the hallway, and the door swung open. Three sets of wide eyes blinked back at him, and for a minute, the only sound was the tick of the watch’s second-hand.

“Harry! Harry’s awake, he’s awake!” Hermione didn’t wait for a reply. She left James and her mother in the doorway and sprinted to the bed, letting her pointed black hat fall to the floor behind her. Her arms squeezed around his shoulders, perhaps a little too hard.

“Hey, Hermione. Happy to see you, too.”

“Oh, Harry. I was so scared. We were all so scared. I thought—I thought you’d never get to read my note.” She sniffed into his hospital gown, then lifted her face and looked at him with red-rimmed eyes.

“Nah. The dragon’s just a bit meaner than I expected.” He held up her watch in the space between them. “I was lucky I had this. Couldn’t have won without it.”

The days and battles that followed threatened to char Harry to a crisp, but every afternoon when the hour hand hit four, Hermione was there. Stories of knights and magic—read with an air of bossiness—weaved together with the beep-beep-beep of the machines, sometimes lulling him to sleep, other times igniting his imagination.

He repaired the burned-out countryside of his mind with silver sparks from a painted wand and cleared the heavy smoke with beams of light from a golden pocket watch. The beast roared and spit and smoked, but with every blow, its head hung lower against the sliver moon. 

Until one day, the dragon retreated for good, its blackened wings beating brokenly against the night sky. Until one day, Harry went home. 

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who supports my stories by reading, commenting, or leaving kudos. It means so much to me.


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